Ubuntu Founder Takes Aim at Red Hat

Canonical has suffered more than a little flack over the years for what some critics call a lack of openness in Ubuntu development. But if one agrees with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, the truly closed platforms are Ubuntu’s competitors, especially Red Hat. At least, that’s what Shuttleworth had to say recently on his blog. Here’s the full story.
Criticism of Canonical’s standards has often centered around issues such as the proprietary licenses that govern some of its software, such as the server side code for the Ubuntu One file syncing service. The company has also irked users for introducing major changes to Ubuntu, like the Unity interface, without soliciting much community feedback first.
Who’s More Open?
But those are not the issues Shuttleworth spoke out about recently. Instead, his argument that Ubuntu development is more open than that of many competing open source projects centered around Canonical’s willingness to let any qualified community members contribute to Ubuntu, regardless of whether they have a formal relationship with the company. As he wrote on his blog:
“Ubuntu set the standard for transparency as a company producing a distribution a long time ago, when we invited anybody who showed a passion and competence to have commit and